Portrait of a Girl

by Binkert, Dörthe

  Nika sketched. She made drawings in her notebook and on any piece of paper she could find. Segantini had brought her a new book when the old one was full, and then another one. Nika also practiced writing. Next to the drawings she made, she carefully wrote the names of the things she had drawn: lake, boat, hotel, tree, Gaetano. Segantini showed her how to hold the pencil when she was drawing, his hand guiding her hand. She began to tremble when she felt the warmth of his skin. She wasn’t used to being touched by other people. To be touched gently especially was something new. He looked at her briefly, but said nothing.

  “Try to draw a self-portrait,” he said to her one day. “Doesn’t matter if it’s not successful. It’s very hard to draw yourself. After all, can anyone really see himself or herself?”

  “I’ll try,” Nika said.

  She went back to the hotel and sneaked into one of the guest toilets that members of the staff were not allowed to use. Those were the only places where there were mirrors, and it was the only place where she could lock herself in and be unobserved. With one blow from a sharp-edged stone, she shattered the mirror hanging over the sink. She selected a fragment from among the many that had clattered to the floor and hid it in her garden apron. Then she waited until she couldn’t hear anyone moving outside and darted out again like a shadow.

  Before she fell asleep at night, she would slowly write the letters of the alphabet and form them into words. Early in the morning, before going to work, she would sketch herself. It was hard to draw her face from the little of it she could see in the small mirror fragment. It drove her to despair. The mirror fragmented her face—the hairline, a section of forehead, an eye, her nose—and in the end she mimicked the images on paper. She created a separate drawing for each feature—the nose, the mouth and chin, the ear, and cheek.

  She gave the drawings to Segantini. He made no comment, just passed a finger across her forehead to compare the actual hairline with her drawing of it. She reached for his finger and held it. He pulled his hand away.

  The next time he came, he brought her a bouquet of alpine roses.

  He still didn’t comment on her sketches.

  She drew her upper body, with the flowers lying between her naked breasts; you could see the crumpled edge of her pushed-up shirt. She liked the drawing. She rolled it up and tied a red velvet ribbon around it that she once found outside the hotel and carefully saved. Segantini took the rolled-up drawing but didn’t untie the ribbon.

  “It’s a present for you,” Nika said. “I would like you to look at it and tell me if you like it.”

  “I’ll look at it later,” he said, “when I’m by myself.”

  He could see that her feelings were hurt.

  “You’re afraid,” she said, and there was annoyance and disappointment in her voice. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be afraid.”

  He wanted to answer her, but she angrily pulled the roll out of his hand, took off the ribbon, and tore up the sheet of paper. The scraps fluttered to the ground.

  Then she left without even turning around.

  She was right. He was afraid. For some time already he had not been sleeping well, which put him in a bad mood, since in the morning and for the rest of the day he needed all his senses to paint. He thought about Nika too often, and that turned everything topsy-turvy—his daily routine and his body and mind. In his thoughts, he apologized to Bice, and yet he couldn’t rein in his fantasies. Bice didn’t mention Betsy’s remarks, but he knew that she had pricked up her ears. He didn’t bring up the subject either. There was almost a sort of rebelliousness in it, stubbornly ignoring the topic because it gave him the sense of retaining a degree of freedom. So what if he wanted to keep a part of his life entirely for himself? He hadn’t done anything wrong, and no one could reproach him for helping a young person. He had helped others, too, Giovanni Giacometti, for instance, a friend from Stampa and a talented painter. In spite of all this, he had a guilty conscience. If he spoke to Bice about it, he might have had to suspend his visits to Nika for Bice’s sake, because he loved Bice and needed her more than anyone else. But to never return to the hotel garden was impossible.

  Whenever he went to see Nika, the first thing he saw was her hair glowing from afar, like a temptation. The “bad mothers,” the “lustful women” in his paintings all had Nika’s hair; they were like her. The comforting thoughtfulness and motherliness that Bice possessed in spite of her youth were missing in Nika. Nika challenged him as if she were his equal, and she was turning the order of his daily life—which he had so carefully constructed—upside down.

  After she had ripped apart her drawing and walked away from him, he’d pieced the scraps together and glued them with great care. It was shameless of her to have placed his roses between her breasts. The bristly green leaves in the drawing made her flesh look even softer. There was a brazen cry in the picture, a passionate longing.

  She was as rebellious, as excitable as he was, eager to learn, filled with a hunger and thirst for life.

  It was not proper for a woman to show her breasts so shamelessly to a stranger like him, even if it was only a drawing. It was as if she were offering herself to him. Yes, that was exactly what she’d intended; that he would now have to see her body whenever he closed his eyes.

  And that’s how it was. He wanted to know what her skin felt like; it was why he had guided her hand when she was drawing.

  And by God, he didn’t know what he was supposed to think about the fact that she was so very much like him.

  Nika, on the other hand, felt a vague fury growing inside her that threatened to overpower all other emotions. She no longer knew what she wanted.

  The locket had given her a task. It had challenged her to find her mother. And then there was the piece of paper inside the locket that had to be deciphered. You don’t write something on a piece of paper, fold it up, and then put it inside a valuable locket if you don’t want it to be read and understood. But the writing could not be deciphered using the alphabet Nika had learned. These were different, foreign characters that her mother had used.

  Nika was angry with her mother for abandoning her to such a miserable fate yet forcing upon her this mysterious reminder. She felt forced to keep thinking of her, to rack her brain about her whereabouts, to long for her.

  Nika was also angry with Segantini and for similar reasons. He was the first person in her life who had really showed any affectionate concern for her, who’d understood her, who’d given her what she needed. And despite that, he pushed her away, didn’t want the love that he himself had engendered in her.

  And Nika was angry with herself. Once again, she was left with a passion that had no hope of fulfillment.

  She would tear up all her drawings, all her notebooks. She would focus on her work at the hotel. Signor Robustelli was a nice man and perhaps he could find somewhere else for her to live during the winter and hire her again next summer. She earned a little money, had enough to eat, and was no longer beaten the way she had been by the farmer, who had begrudged her every single piece of bread. It was enough to be happy.

  When she got ready for bed that night, she opened the collar of her blouse and took off the chain with the locket. She wouldn’t wear it anymore. And she wouldn’t look for her mother anymore, either. After all, where could she search? She had run away from Mulegns because she hoped by some miracle to find her family. But there were no miracles.

  And Segantini could go to hell.

  She would work, would forget about her desire to learn to read, to write, and to draw. When the season came to an end, she would speak with Signor Robustelli. She’d bury all her stupid dreams along with her locket.

  Gaetano would be glad to see her working without interruptions. For some time already, he hadn’t been happy about the visits she was getting, and it wouldn’t be long before he’d complain to Signor Robustelli.

  The only t
hing she planned to keep was the fragment of mirror in her apron pocket, even though she’d once cut herself on its sharp edge.

  That night, Nika dreamed about her escape from Mulegns. The dream was so real and detailed that she didn’t know where she was when she woke up.

  Oh God, yes. Her flight from the farm.

  One morning toward the end of May, the farmer’s wife had started turning the house upside down; had ordered Nika to scrub the floors, to clean the windows. Suddenly she decided to haul the big wooden chest in which the family’s clothes were stored, outside. “Grab hold!” she called to Nika. “I want to take a look at these clothes. We’re getting visitors from Chur tomorrow.” That didn’t sound like good news, but Nika couldn’t figure out what was going on. Nobody had ever come there from Chur before. “Make sure you look neat and clean tomorrow,” she said. And Nika watched in horror as the woman opened the chest and began pulling everything out of it, all the things that she had hurriedly stuffed back in disorder. If the farmer’s wife really took everything out now and looked through it all to put it back in order, she’d notice that the locket was missing.

  “But years ago I . . .” the woman mumbled to herself.

  Suddenly, Nika couldn’t think clearly. She realized that in only a few minutes the woman would discover that the locket was missing. It didn’t occur to her that she could just pretend she didn’t know what it was all about. She knew only that in her desperation she’d give herself away and that the farmer would beat the living daylights out of her.

  Then, as if an angel was helping her, something made the woman pause in her work and go inside. Nika used that moment to go behind the stable, shove aside the stone that marked her hiding place, dig in the soil with her bare hands, take out the necklace with the locket, and start running. The dog began to bark. Nika could hear the farmer’s wife, who hadn’t yet noticed anything amiss, scolding him. She ran and ran, leaving the village behind her. Then she was on the road that led to Marmorera and Bivio. It forked there, one road leading over the Septimer and the other, the Julier Pass.

  Luckily, it was the end of May. Had it been just two or three weeks earlier, there would have been no getting through without sturdy boots and warm winter clothes. The snow would have forced her to give up in the next village. Yet if she didn’t get far enough away from Mulegns, she would be in danger of being recognized and sent back. She had to get over the mountain pass.

  She knew that the Septimer Pass led directly into the Bregaglia Valley and toward Italy. But it was isolated and was seldom used. The road over the Julier, because it was the postal route, was in much better shape and more developed. She had no money for the post coach, but she had hopes that a carriage would take her part of the way once she was far enough away from Mulegns to avoid raising any suspicions.

  As it got dark, she crept into a stable near Bivio for the night and started out again early the next morning. She was able to slake her thirst with snow; there was enough of it as she got higher up. But she was tormented by hunger.

  The road snaked toward Silvaplana, and she had reached the top of the pass when a carriage actually stopped. A man looked out of the window and told her that if she would like to sit up front next to the driver, they could take her as far as Silvaplana. Nika, frozen through and through, with her woolen shawl wrapped tightly about her shoulders, gratefully climbed up. The driver, a pleasant man, lifted the heavy blanket that covered his knees so that Nika could warm her legs under it too. He drove off with a flick of his whip. He said nothing but held out a canteen with hot tea to her.

  The warm tea ran down Nika’s throat, and she couldn’t tell what burned more, the tea or her tears of relief, as sensation slowly and with a painful tingle returned to her frozen feet.

  When they arrived in Silvaplana, she was lucky again. The driver said, “We’re staying here, but if you want to go to Maloja and Italy,” he pointed out the direction with his arm, “you have to go this way.”

  And so Nika now knew which way she had to go. She took the high road to Maloja.

  New Experiences

  Nika wasn’t the only one tormented by memories. Mathilde also was haunted, even in her sleep, by the afternoon she had spent in secret with James at the Pension Veraguth. How easily she had given in to him—and to herself!

  James had slowly pulled the gloves off Mathilde’s fingers, had kissed her palms, had only let go of her hands once he was certain that she would fling them around his neck. And that is just what she’d done. Closing her eyes, she’d held her face toward him full of expectation, as if the sun were shining on her. But he hadn’t kissed her. He’d taken the comb decorated with a glowing blue butterfly out of her hair, and as she’d held her breath, he’d run his hands through the blonde curls. Then gathering the rebellious hair at the back of her neck, he pulled her head gently backward. She yielded easily, her eyes still closed. And now he kissed her, first on her arched throat, then her small well-formed ear, her cheek reddened by excitement, and her temple on which there was a tiny mole. Mathilde opened her lips, and he traced the soft contours of her lips with his finger. How young her lips were.

  “Mathilde,” he said softly, “have you ever kissed a man before?”

  She nodded with closed eyes. “Not properly,” she murmured.

  “Open your eyes,” James said, “and look at me.”

  Mathilde felt his hands on her throat. They slid downward over her breasts, and then began slowly, braced for protest, to undo one button after the other. Next, they slid under the white summertime muslin of her dress, pushed their way under her shirt, and cupped her naked breasts. She didn’t want to open her eyes and look at him, better not to, it wasn’t right what she was allowing him to do. And it wasn’t just that, she wanted only to feel his hand exploring her skin. He was doing it for her, allowing her at last to explore herself, her own body, along with his desires. She thought of Adrian, her fiancé, who didn’t permit himself to do more than kiss her closed lips, gently and lovingly but without passion. Those were the rules. After all, he had a whole lifetime to make love to her and could gather the necessary knowledge for that elsewhere. Yet she . . . The hands, not stopping, moved on, began touching her hips, easily loosened the waistband of her underpants, which were open at the bottom. She would be totally unprotected if he were to push her skirt up . . .

  Suddenly she was scared to death. What was she doing? Where were her shoes? All she had on were her white stockings. Where in the world were her shoes? She had desired James so very much, and now she was afraid. Not because she was thinking of Adrian, but because she herself had gone so far. James pulled away, poured her another glass of champagne, and handed it to her. She was glad he had stopped. The champagne was refreshing and cold, oh, that was good. James smiled at her and poured some more into his own glass.

  What was she afraid of? He wouldn’t harm her. After all, he had stopped as soon as he sensed that she no longer felt comfortable with what he was doing. What a wonderful adventure she was having! No one would ever find out. James knew exactly how to treat her, and he had so much more experience than she did. That he was even interested in her . . . Her mother, she was sure, had never had such an experience, maybe not even Aunt Betsy. Mathilde held her now-empty glass out to James, suddenly proud of her recklessness. James shook his head.

  “No, no, Mathilde, the champagne will go to your head, and it will be my fault if you have a headache afterward. I won’t let you have any more. Not another drop!”

  “Hold me in your arms,” she whispered, but again he shook his head.

  “No. We have to go now. Kate is waiting for us, and we don’t want to have to answer too many questions, do we?”

  Mathilde was disappointed. He was too sensible, she thought now. He didn’t love her after all. Not really. Not the way she wanted it. He was supposed to press her, and she would then say no. He was supposed to desire her passionately and only re
in himself in at the end because she asked him to. And then he would realize that he loved her so very much, that . . .

  “Mathilde,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “Mathilde, will you allow me to take a picture of you? A photograph? Your Aunt Kate emphasized that you are engaged. That means that I shall lose you. Please allow me to take a memento of you home with me, something that I can always look at. It will be as if you were physically there. I will smell your perfume, hear your laughter . . .”

  Mathilde was confused. A photograph! As a memento! So he didn’t want to fight for her and eliminate Adrian. It made her all mixed up. She didn’t know how to answer him.

  James got his camera from the closet. “Please,” he said. “Don’t act holier than the Pope. The camera won’t bite. It won’t even come close to you. Nothing will happen to you. And it won’t hurt, I promise!”

  It made her laugh. He was right.

  “Very well, I’ll get properly dressed and comb my hair,” she said. She actually felt flattered that he wanted to photograph her.

  “Oh, no!” he cried, disappointed. “Then I could be snapping just any lady. I want you, Mathilde, you, just as beautiful as you are at this instant.”

  He thought she was beautiful. “All right then. But hurry before I change my mind,” she said with a trace of the doubt that was on the point of penetrating the champagne fog.

  He kissed her hand.

  “Miss Schobinger . . . Miss Schobinger!” The nurse in a white apron and a little white cap bent over Mathilde, brushing the damp hair from her forehead. “Wake up, Mathilde. What’s wrong? What were you dreaming? Come, come. Look at me!”

  The sun was shining into the room, its rays falling on the feather quilt that the nurse had carefully fluffed up. Through the open window came the scent of the summer meadows.